In Dutch, we have a saying 'Een toontje lager zingen' which basically means that the person should sing a bit lower, a.k.a "take it down a notch" or "put someone in his place".
Sing a bit lower is an almost literal translation from dutch. The phrase doesn't have to do anything with singing.
An example would go like this:
John is being pretty arrogant and offensive. He's stating things he doesn't know anything about, but pretends he does. He's talking down to other people, etc.
Then someone else comes in and burns him pretty good. Not by being mean, but by correcting him with actual true statements, where he was wrong.
Now this person put him in his place and made John 'een toontje lager laten zingen', a.k.a. sing a bit lower.
Is there an equivalent phrase or idiom to this in English? Or is it exactly "take it down a notch"?
Best Answer
In the context of singing, one can certainly ask someone to "take it down a notch" to reduce their prominence in an ensemble. It wouldn't be particularly polite, so how that request was delivered would be important.
In the case of deflating someone's arrogance, we might say that he had been taken down a peg or two, which is certainly similar to the Dutch expression.
The two expressions are kept separate in English, though. Notch would be for volume; pegs for position.